Traditional solar cells harness electricity from light by exploiting the photovoltaic effect that exists at semiconductor junctions, where a semiconductor absorbs light and simultaneously decouples the electric charges (“electrons” and “holes”) that arise due to that absorption. However, while these cells have an inherently high stability, to avoid the recombination of electrons and holes prior to their separation, their semiconductors materials must be highly pure and defect-free, resulting in very high fabrication costs (>$300/m2).
Organic and hybrid organic/inorganic solar cells have been described, e.g., in (Shaheen et al. “2.5 Percent Efficient Organic Plastic Solar Cells,” Applied Physics Letters 78, 841-843 (2001); Peumans, P. and S. R. Forest. “Very-high efficiency double-heterostructure copper pthalocyanine/C60 photovoltaic cells”, Applied Physics Letters 79 (1): 126-128 (2001); Huynh et al., “Hybrid Nanorod-Polymer Solar Cells”, Science 295, 2425-2427 (2002); Schmidt-Mende et al., “Self-Organized Discotic Liquid Crystals for High-Efficiency Organic Photovoltaics”, Science 293, 1119-1122 (2002)).
In these solar cell devices, however, the device architectures are suboptimal in terms of their nanometer-scale morphology, and improvements are needed to obtain higher-efficiency devices. In particular, the morphology of the active layer of a more optimal device would have an architecture of nanometer scale ordered interdigitation due to the nature of the exciton-based physics. The lifetime of migrating excitons is extremely short, and as such an exciton can typically diffuse only about 10 nm (or at most 10's of nm) before the electron and hole spontaneously (and non-productively) recombine. Thus, to separate the electron away from the hole with which it is bound (and ultimately generate electricity), an exciton must reach the junction to another material (one with higher electron affinity) within 10's of nm of where it was initially created.
In organic and hybrid organic/inorganic solar-cell devices of the prior art, the morphology of the active layer has been quasi-random: Approaches based on blending two or more materials result in a mixture with no control over the exact arrangement of the materials other than that they are intermixed statistically in a targeted ratio. Further, in blended cells, materials can and often do cluster into clumps (that are typically interspersed amongst other areas of too little density). The result of each irregular distribution is suboptimal charge splitting, suboptimal charge transport (via losses due to poor percolation in the electron- and/or hole-transporting materials), and uncertain scalability to thicker cells (as may be required to absorb sufficient amounts for higher efficiencies) or to larger-area cells. Furthermore, in devices of the prior art, the movement of charges through the active materials of the devices required regularly and closely spaced nanoparticles or nanorods that could collect and transport free electrons to the outer boundary of the active layer of the device. The lack of uniform spacing in these devices decreased the device efficiency.
An alternative approach to building an organic solar cell has been developed by Michael Graetzel and his colleagues, who have constructed dye-sensitized, nanocrystalline TiO2 based solar cells using a liquid electrolyte (O'Regan et al. “A Low-cost, High-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 Films”, Nature, Vol. 353 pp737-740, 24 October, 1991). Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) disaggregate the processes of light absorption and charge separation. A monolayer of a Ruthenium-based dye that is chemically adsorbed onto a semiconductor surface absorbs light. After having been excited by a photon, the dye injects an electron into a nano-particulate past composed of a semiconductor, TiO2 (titania), upon which the electric field inside the titania allows extraction of the electron. In a parallel process, positive charge is transferred from the dye to a liquid iodide/triiodide-based redox mediator, which allows hole transfer through the solution to a counter electrode, after which the redox mediator is returned to its reduced state, closing the circuit.
Although Graetzel cells can reach 10% efficiency in optimized devices, the only suitable electrolyte (in terms of the speed of the associated redox reaction, etc.) is also highly corrosive. There is no known effective way to seal the cell with the liquid I−/I3 electrolyte. Even if cell could be effectively sealed, the corrosiveness of the electrolyte is a potential hazard that has discouraged large-scale production of Graetzel cells.
Several approaches have been taken to replace the liquid iodide/triiodide electrolyte with a solid-state material that exhibits sufficient hole transport for efficient device function. These approaches include: (1) Application of ionic conducting polymer gels (Wang et al., 2003), (2) sol-gel nanocomposites containing an ionic liquid (Stathatos et al., 2003), (3) ionic conductors (Cao et al., 1995), (4) inorganic p-type semiconductors, such as CuI or CuSCN (Tennakone et al., 1995; O'Regan and Schwartz, 1998; O'Regan et al., 2003), and (5) low molecular weight organic hole conductors such as 2,2′7,7′tetrakis(N,N-di-p-methoxyphenyl-amine)-9,9′-spirobifluorene(spiro-Me OTAD) (Krüger et al., 2001).
While each of these approaches has succeeded in producing a functional solid-state DSSC, the AM1.5G power conversion efficiency of all of these devices has typically been relatively low, due in part to losses resulting from an irregular titania morphology, which limits the accessible cavities within the tortuously arranged and sintered paste of the nano-particulate titania, leading to incomplete filling of the solid-state electrolyte material. For example, a DSSC using CuSCN as a solid-state hole conductor showed only 65% filling efficiency for 6-micron thick cells, with the filling efficiency dropping as the cell thickness was increased towards that of a typical DSSC(O'Regan et al, 2003).
Another shortcoming of dye-sensitized solar cells such as Graetzel cell is that a monolayer of dye or pigment such as the ruthenium pigment sensitizes the titania particles. Thus light is typically absorbed only in the monolayer at the surface the TiO2 nanospheres and not in the bulk of the dye or pigment, resulting in lower absorption efficiency per unit volume of the active layer in the solar cell. Further, the absorption spectrum of the ruthenium dye is not fully matched to the irradiance spectrum of sunlight, and this mismatch decreases the potential light absorption from which electrons could be harvested. Taken together, these factors limit the potential efficiency of the current approaches to solid-state DSSC technology.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a solar cell architecture/active-layer morphology that overcomes the above difficulties.